20 TEMPO 75 (298) 20–40 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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doi:10.1017/S0040298221000371

ADÈS AND SONATA FORMS

Edward Venn

Abstract: Despite an ever-expanding body of literature on Adès’s

engagement with the music of the past, his use of traditional for-
mal models has attracted little critical comment. That which
does exist privileges the relatively straightforward surface articula-
tion of his musical forms over more nuanced accounts. In the case
of Adès’s sonata forms, this has had at least two consequences for
our understanding of his music: first, that too strong an emphasis
on syntactical groupings occludes what is happening discursively in
the music; and second, that ‘textbook’ models are not the only for-
mal tradition with which Adès’s sonata forms engage. Rather, his
sonatas bear traces of a rotational model that recalls the examples
of Janáček and Sibelius. This article considers how Adès’s sonata
forms can be constituted not as neo-classical prefabrications but, a
posteriori, as a practice that emerges across his career – from the
Chamber Symphony and . . .but all shall be well to the Piano Quintet
and Concerto for Piano and Orchestra – from an interaction between
traditional syntactical groupings, thematic procedures and tonal plots.

Exposition: sonata, what do you mean to me?

Thomas Adès’s Chamber Symphony, op. 2 (1990) was first performed
in 1991, a few days before the composer’s twentieth birthday, as part
of the Cambridge Festival of Contemporary Music. The work’s first
professional reading occurred just over two years later, in a concert
given by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Matthias
Bamert. In the interim Adès had come to national attention as both
performer (having performed with the Park Lane Group in January
1993) and as a composer (having signed for Faber Music). All this,
I’m ashamed to say, was somewhat lost on me as I sat in the audience
at the BBC Philharmonic concert. Still at school and still finding my
way in music, I found far more comprehensible the approaches to
tradition embodied in the other pieces in the concert, by Wood,
Goehr and Holloway (in that order). I don’t recall if I had a copy of
the programme with me, but I suspect the bafflement I felt at the
time with Adès’s Chamber Symphony would not have been diminished
had I read that ‘[t]he introduction consists of a tune and a winding-up of
the mechanism; this leads to a sonata-form first movement with clearly
defined first and second subject groups in the manner of Schubert’.1

1
Thomas Adès, programme notes on Chamber Symphony, op. 2, 2009, www.fabermusic.
com/music/chamber-symphony-2009 (accessed 18 February 2021).

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 ADÈS AND SONATA FORMS 21

Simply put, I would not have been able to reconcile my narrow under-
standing of sonata form at that time with what I was hearing.
A quarter of a century and half a lifetime later, Adès’s programme
note to his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2018) offers a descrip-
tion of the opening movement that, in Alex Ross’s words, is ‘almost
comically old-fashioned, inviting the audience to listen for first and
second themes, development and recapitulation, and so on’.2 Again,
the notes appeal to a shared understanding of formal conventions,
and their audibility, though Adès furnishes his account with sufficient
musical landmarks that even a school pupil (such as I used to be)
would have been able to follow what was going on:
The first movement Allegramente [sic: the score has Allegrissimo] opens with a
statement of the theme by piano and then tutti. A march-like bridge passage
leads to the more expressive second subject, first played by the piano and
then taken up by the orchestra. The development section interrogates the
first theme before an octave mini-cadenza leads to the recapitulation ff.
There is then a solo cadenza based on the second subject, first played tremolo
and then over many octaves, the piano joined first by the horn and then by full
orchestra. The movement ends with a coda based on the first theme and the
march.3
Comically old-fashioned or not, Ross immediately qualifies his obser-
vation: ‘the work is far more than an exercise in nostalgia. It is an
unruly romp across familiar terrain – at once a paean to tradition
and a sophisticated burlesque of it’.4
Ross’s characterisation of this ‘unruly romp across familiar terrain’
belongs to a long-standing trope in both the public and scholarly
reception of Adès’s music. It is there, splashed across the top of
Faber Music’s website (‘his diverse body of work immediately con-
nects with audiences, and assesses the fundamentals of music afresh’).5
It can be found in Richard Taruskin’s seminal 1999 review of CDs of
Adès’s music:
The music never loses touch with its base in the common listening experience
of real audiences, so that it is genuinely evocative. At the same time it is quirk-
ily inventive and constantly surprising: enough so to confound short-range pre-
dictions and elude obviousness of reference even when models (often
Stravinsky) are nameable. And that makes it genuinely novel.6
Most recently, Adès’s ‘confrontation with the musical past’ forms the
basis of the opening chapter of Drew Massey’s monograph on the
composer.7
Despite an ever-expanding body of literature on Adès’s ‘unruly romp’
through tradition, the immediate stimulus for Ross’s comment – form,
and in particular sonata form – has attracted less critical engagement
than, say, the use of allusion and quotation,8 extramusical meanings9 or

2
Alex Ross, ‘The Concerto Challenge’, New Yorker, 25 March 2019, www.newyorker.com/
magazine/2019/03/25/the-concerto-challenge (accessed 18 February 2021).
3
Thomas Adès, programme notes on Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, https://www.
fabermusic.com/music/concerto-for-piano-and-orchestra (accessed 18 February 2021).
4
Ross, ‘The Concerto Challenge’.
5
Faber Music, ‘Thomas Adès’, www.fabermusic.com/we-represent/thomas-ad%C3%A8s
(accessed 18 February 2021).
6
Richard Taruskin, ‘A Surrealist Composer Comes to the Rescue of Modernism’, New York
Times, 5 December 1999. Reprinted with a postscript in The Danger of Music and Other
Anti-Utopian Essays (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009), p. 149.
7
Drew Massey, Thomas Adès in Five Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), p. 8.
8
Arnold Whittall, ‘James Dillon, Thomas Adès, and the Pleasures of Allusion’, in Aspects of
British Music of the 1990s, ed. Peter O’ Hagan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 3–27.
9
Edward Venn, ‘Thomas Adès and the Spectres of Brahms’, Journal of the Royal Musical
Association, 140, no. 1 (2015), pp. 163–212, and Thomas Adès: Asyla (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2017).

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 22 TEMPO

surrealism.10 As an extreme example of the relative marginalisation of

form in Adès scholarship,11 Dominic Wells’ TEMPO article on Adès’s
music made space for just two sentences on the subject:
Other expressions of neoclassical tendencies are apparent in Adès’s musical
forms, writing symphonies and sonatas, concertos with a three-movement,
fast-slow-fast structure. He uses traditional structures such as a theme and
variations . . . and even strict sonata form, as in his Piano Quintet (2000).12
The mention of the Piano Quintet is significant. Wells’ description
closely parallels Tom Service’s programme note on the work
(Service describes the Quintet as being ‘cast in a relatively strict sonata
form’), and, along with all other commentators on the work, Wells
accepts both the utility and applicability of this description.13
Service, for his part, concludes that
the sonata form of the Piano Quintet is neither a set of arbitrary structural props,
nor a neo-classical framing device. Instead, the architecture of the piece grows
out of the transformations of its material. And in re-staging the challenges of
sonata form, the Piano Quintet does not just articulate a contemporary creative
perspective: it represents a vivid reimagination of the musical past.14
This too has been a persistent theme in subsequent writing on the
work, but the general idea predates Service. One of the earliest
instances can be found in Mathias Tarnopolsky’s programme note
to Adès’s . . .but all shall be well, op. 10 (1993), in which the three
main sections of the work are said to ‘function in a way similar to
an exposition, development and recapitulation and Adès adapts
Classical sonata form to his own highly original requirements’.15 If
both Service (and his nod towards transformations of material) and
Tarnopolsky (in his invocation of formal function) gesture towards
a more complex notion of form, their programme notes nevertheless
emulate those that Adès wrote for the Chamber Symphony and the
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in their prioritisation of the
large-scale syntactical groupings of sonata form (exposition, including
first and second subjects, development, recapitulation, coda). In this
sense, sonata form is treated as an a priori category and, more specif-
ically, a top-down norm into which pieces are readily assimilated.
This, in turn, reflects a wider lacuna in the promotion and recep-
tion of Adès’s music that privileges the relatively straightforward sur-
face articulation of his musical forms over more nuanced accounts. In

10
Massey, Five Essays, pp. 93–139.
11
Chapters by Philip Stoecker (on chaconnes) and Richard Powell (on symphonic resolution
in Tevot) in the forthcoming Thomas Adès Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2021), eds Edward Venn and Philip Stoecker, begin to address the lacunae of close readings
of form in Adès’s music.
12
Dominic Wells, ‘Plural Styles, Personal Styles: The Music of Thomas Adès’, Tempo, 66
(2012), p. 4.
13
Tom Service, programme note on Piano Quintet, 2000, www.fabermusic.com/music/
piano-quintet-3267 (accessed 18 February 2021). The most extended published studies on
the Piano Quintet, all of which make reference to Service’s programme note, can be found
in Christopher Fox, ‘Tempestuous Times: The Recent Music of Thomas Adès’, Musical
Times, 145, no. 1888 (2004), pp. 41–56; Emma Gallon, ‘Narrativities in the Music of Thomas
Adès: The Piano Quintet and Brahms’, in Music and Narrative since 1900, eds Michael L. Klein
and Nicholas Reyland (Bloomington: Indianapolis University Press, 2013), pp. 251–63;
Kenneth Gloag, ‘Thomas Adès and the “Narrative Agendas” of “Absolute Music”’, in
Dichotonies: Gender and Music, ed. Beate Neumeier (Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg, 2009),
pp. 97–110; Philip Stoecker, ‘Aligned Cycles in Thomas Adès’s Piano Quintet’, Music
Analysis, 33, no. 1 (2014), pp. 32–64; and Felix Wörner, ‘Tonality as “Irrationally Functional
Harmony”: Thomas Adès’s Piano Quintet’, in Tonality since 1950, eds Felix Wörner, Ullrich
Scheideler and Philip Rupprecht (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2017), pp. 295–311.
14
Service, Piano Quintet.
15
Matias Tarnopolsky, programme note to . . .but all shall be well, 1993, www.fabermusic.
com/music/but-all-shall-be-well-2350 (accessed 18 February 2021).

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 ADÈS AND SONATA FORMS 23

the case of Adès’s sonata forms, there are at least two consequences
for our understanding of his music. The first is that too strong an
emphasis on syntactical groupings – as can be found, for instance,
in uncritical acceptance of sonata-form labels as explanatory concepts –
serves to occlude what is happening discursively in the music (such as
Service’s ‘transformations’). The thematic processes of Adès’s music
often generate a particular dramatic or teleological drive that happens
in dialogue with, rather than as a consequence of, syntactic groupings.
Second, the ‘textbook’ models are not the only formal tradition with
which Adès’s sonata forms engage. Rather, his sonatas bear the traces
of a rotational model that recalls the examples of Janáček and Sibelius.
In Adès’s case, this is most marked in his treatment of large-scale tonal
plot.16
How, then, might Adès’s sonata forms be constituted not as neo-
classical prefabrications, but a posteriori as a practice that emerges
across works that span his career? As I write this introduction, a
few weeks short of Adès’s fiftieth birthday, and 30 years after the
first informal performance of his Chamber Symphony, it would
seem that a re-evaluation of his sonata forms are long overdue.
Repurposing Fontenelle’s famous question ‘Sonate, que me veux-te?’,
I seek to do just that.17

Development: from the Chamber Symphony to the Piano Quintet

For Adès, the attraction of sonata form is not, pace Wells, that of a pre-
fabricated neo-classical mould but rather, in Hélène Cao’s astute sum-
mary, ‘a framework conducive to a more developed instrumental
dramaturgy’.18 I made a similar claim in a 2005 review when I sug-
gested that ‘the use of sonata form [in the Piano Quintet] is thus no
mere crutch or affectation: it is central to the organization of the
unfolding temporal drama’.19 Key to any such claim is the assumption
that the unfolding drama (or narrative) in Adès’s sonata-form move-
ments is something that emerges from the bottom-up – from the pres-
entation and development of material – rather than from the top-down
imposition of a formal model. Speaking with Kirill Gerstein in 2020
about the form of the Piano Quintet, Adès acknowledged that
There might be an ideal world in which, if you’re completely in harmony
with your material, that the structure develops as an inevitable result of that
material, of what it wants to do. . . . In order to make the thing have its
own. . . flourish according to its own lights, there has to be a certain amount
of pushing and training in some way.20

16
The approach to form adopted in this article owes much to the example of Julian Horton,
Brahms’ Piano Concerto no. 2, op. 83: Analytical and Contextual Case Studies (Leuven: Peeters,
2017). Nevertheless, the ways in which Adès’s music articulates formal parameters (syntax,
thematic process, tonal plot) often differs substantially from eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century precedents.
17
Beverly Jerold has suggested that the most common translation of this bon mot, ‘Sonata,
what do you want from me?’, is perhaps, contextually, better understood as ‘Sonata,
what do you mean to me?’, which is how I treat it here. ‘Fontenelle’s Famous Question
and Performance Standards of the Day’, College Music Symposium, 43 (2003), p. 1.
18
‘La forme sonate lui offre un cadre propice à une dramaturgie instrumentale plus
développée’ (my translation from the French original). Hélène Cao, Thomas Adès le
voyageur: Devenir compositeur, être musicien (Paris: MF Éditions, 2007), p. 53.
19
Edward Venn, review of Adès, Piano Quintet (EMI, 7243 5 57662 27), TEMPO, 59 (2005),
p. 74. See also Gallon, ‘Narrativities’, pp. 222–24 and, for a gendered reading of the
Quintet, Gloag, ‘Narrative Agendas’, pp. 102–109.
20
Adès, in Kirill Gerstein, Thomas Adès: ‘Roots, Seeds & Live Cultures’ – ‘Kirill Gerstein Invites’
@ HfM Eisler Berlin, online video interview with the composer, 18 June 2020, www.you-
tube.com/watch?v=I0kHP_npxJA, beginning at 36:00 (accessed 21 February 2021).

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 24 TEMPO

The pushing and training, it is implied, is the way in which material is

accommodated within particular forms; this is certainly the case for
Adès’s treatment of the sonata principle.
Take, for instance, the first movement of the Chamber Symphony.
A formal overview of the movement, as in Table 1, which includes the
durations of larger sections drawn from two recordings of the work,21
would suggest Adès’s relatively traditional acceptance of the group-
ings of sonata form (see Table 1). Indeed, the major syntactic bound-
aries are articulated by changes of texture and instrumental colour, as
well as (to a greater extent) thematic content. Adès, as if to emphasise
the point, positions single woodblock strikes at the major formal
divisions.22 The superimposition of first- and second-group material
(designated A and B in Table 1) in the recapitulation contributes to
its compression with respect to the exposition. Running almost con-
currently with the larger-scale grouping, the underlying tonal plot is
characterised by a three-fold rotational presentation of B as a tonal
centre, with E♭ and A functioning as local contrasts.
If this overview seems to give emphasis to top-down, a priori
conceptualisations of sonata form, an ambiguity over the function
of bars 27–40 draws attention to the ways in which Adès reconceives
traditional relationships between thematic procedures and grouping
syntax, as well as his handling of tonal allusions, as if from the
bottom-up. Bars 6–24 are underpinned by a bass – primarily articu-
lated by the double bass and embellished by the bass clarinet – that
keeps returning to B as a focal pitch. (The use of brackets for the
tonal plot of Table 1 indicates that tonal centres are predominantly
asserted through bass notes, rather than individual chords or har-
monic progressions.) Beginning in bar 25, the bass shifts to arrive
eventually on F♯ in bar 27, accompanied often by its lower neighbour
F♮. In bar 35, the centre of gravity moves once more, to A♮, at the
point where the rhythmic cycle on cymbal initiated in bars 1–6 trans-
fers to snare drum. From here the texture progressively thickens,
rhythmic momentum increases and dynamics grow, leading to a
woodblock strike in bar 40 and the start of a clearly defined new sub-
ject group in bar 41, built over an E♭ bass.
The tonal plot and surface rhetoric of bars 27–40 would thus sug-
gest a functional parallel with the classical transition from first to
second subject group. However, as Jacqueline Greenwood notes,
the riff-like material in the double bass that underpins the entirety
of bars 15–41 gradually accumulates chromatic pitches, with the
12th and final pitch only arriving with the start of the second subject.23
It is the culmination of this thematic process that defines the function
of these bars (hence in Table 1 the transition is retrospectively
understood as a continuation of the first subject group). Surface
rhetoric, syntactical grouping and tonal plot combine to pace,
characterise and dramatise the process: they push and train the
material, in other words, in response to inherited a priori models of
sonata form.

21
The recordings are by Thomas Adès with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
(EMI, 5 56818 2, 1999) and Marin Alsop with the London Philharmonic Orchestra
(LPO, 0035, 2008).
22
This was first observed by Jacqueline Susan Greenwood. See her ‘Selected Vocal and
Chamber Works of Thomas Adès: Stylistic and Contextual Issues’ (PhD thesis, Kingston
University, 2013), pp. 238–55 for an overview of the movement. My analysis draws on
Greenwood’s account.
23
Greenwood, ‘Selected Vocal and Chamber Works’, p. 244.

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Table 1.
Formal overview, Chamber Symphony, op. 2, first movement (1990)

Bars 1–5 6–14 15–26 27–40 41–53 54–66 67–74 75–81 82–103 104–111 112–119 120–125
Duration Adès 40s (11.6%) 65s (18.8%) 43s 78s 76s 43s
(seconds/ (12.5%) (22.6%) (22%) (12.5%)
% of
total) Alsop 36s (10.8%) 62s (18.7%) 46s 77s 72s 39s
(13.9%) (23.2%) (21.7%) (11.7%)
Large-scale Introduction Exposition (Rotation 1) Development (Rotation 2) Recapitulation Coda
function
Rotation 3
Inter-thematic Introduction Introduction A TR ⇨A B Based on Based RT A, B B B-based A-based
function (percussion (cyclic (continued) A, B mainly on superimposed
cycle) theme) combined B and
cyclic
theme
Tonal plot (B) (B)→ (F♯)→ (A) (E♭) → (B)→ (E♭) → (A) (E♭) → (A) (B)→ (A) → (E♭) → (B) →

A, B, etc.: first theme, second theme, etc.; A′: reprise; A1, A2, etc.: new material under same function; TR: transition; RT: retransition; ⇨ : retrospective reinterpretation.

ADÈS AND SONATA FORMS

25
 26 TEMPO

The development preserves the syntactical and rhetorical character-

istics of the classical sonata through its juxtaposition and combination
of ideas from the exposition. Nevertheless, by continually revisiting
harmonic environments built on B, E♭ and A, Adès reprises the
tonal plot of the exposition. The same plot underpins the recapitula-
tion. Doing so appears to turn on its head the rotational idea that
underpins James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy’s sonata theory, in
which the archetypal sonata is conceived as successive rotations of the-
matic modules (comprising primary, transitionary, secondary and clos-
ing material), and in which ‘tonality is irrelevant to the task of
identifying the rotational principle’.24 Adès’s rotations are primarily
tonal: he never repeats the full thematic process heard in the expos-
ition. Having presented his musical hand at the outset, he is instead
content to shuffle his thematic cards to throw light on ever shorter
fragments of his ideas, albeit within the framework supplied by repe-
titions of the tonal plot.
This approach reflects Adès’s combinatorial mindset, encapsulated
in his interviews by the notions of music offering a series of ‘door-
ways’ through which one might make several attempts to pass before
reaching a point of stability. Speaking of Janáček, for instance, Adès
has spoken of how
[h]e’ll take one moment, and show you the inner instability of that moment,
and then hold that as a sort of frozen moment of emotion. . . And the ramifica-
tions of several of these moments placed next to one another are then only
revealed on the last page. In that piece, In the Mists, nothing changes, but
you’re aware that every time the silence comes back, and he tries another door-
way, it transforms from being a phenomenon that opens a new possibility to
something that closes the structure. Yet the material doesn’t change. There’s
no rhetoric in a way.25
Such stability – precarious as it is – is achieved in the coda of the first
movement of the Chamber Symphony through the reversal of the
underlying tonal plot so that the movement ends on B. If this
seems an obvious way to conclude, it should be understood in con-
junction with the expressive trajectory inherited from the sonata
design, and in particular the use of climaxes at the start of the recap-
itulation and coda.
The formal characteristics essayed in the Chamber Symphony – a
rhetorical approach to syntax, thematic process rather than thematic
statement, and a tonal plan based on repeated departures from fixed
centres – are reprised in . . .but all shall be well (see Table 2).26
Tarnopolsky’s programme note describes the syntactic plan in terms
of three ‘panels’, themselves divisible into three.27 Although the
exposition and recapitulation survey similar thematic and tonal ter-
rain, suggesting again large-scale rotations, the development omits
B-section material. Rather, and as the durations in Table 2 show, rota-
tions are most obviously present at the inter-thematic level, in which
varied repetitions of each grouping within the introduction and expos-
ition (for instance, A, A′ and A″) occupy progressively shorter spans of

24
James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and
Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata (Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006), p. 612.
25
Thomas Adès and Tom Service, Thomas Adès: Full of Noises – Conversations with Tom Service
(London: Faber and Faber, 2012), p. 21.
26
Performance durations are taken from Adès’s recording with the City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra (EMI, 5 56818 2, 1999).
27
www.fabermusic.com/music/but-all-shall-be-well-2350 (accessed 18 February 2021).

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Table 2.
Formal overview, . . .but all shall be well, op. 10 (1993)

Bars 1–22 23–32 33 –45 46–66 67–81 82–92 93–109 110–26 127–32 133–56
Duration (seconds/% 46s 24s 22s 44s 32s 23s 33s 32s 13s 48s
of total)
92s (15.1%) 99s (16.3%) 78s (12.8%) 48s (7.9%)
Large-scale function Introduction Exposition
Inter-thematic Cycle Cycle Cycle 3 A A′ A″ B B′ B″ Closing section based
function 1 2 on Introduction
Tonal plot B→ G B→ G B→ G → B Gm
V/B
Cadence B: V I F♯: V

ADÈS AND SONATA FORMS

27
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28 TEMPO
Bars 157–72 173–90 191–211 213–23 224–31 232–45 246–57 258–65 266 – 98
Duration (seconds/ 32s 34s 40s 24s 17s 27s 32s 20s 66s
% of total)
106s (17.4%) 120s (19.7%) 66s
(10.8%)
Large-scale function Development RT Recapitulation Coda
Inter-thematic Based Based Incorporates material A A′ B B′ Closing
function on A on A from Introduction section
Tonal plot F♯ → Gm / G F♯ → B B Gm Gm B
Cadence I B: ♭II I B: V I
 ADÈS AND SONATA FORMS 29

time. The corresponding broadening of groupings in the development

and recapitulation provide a counterbalance to the momentum thus
gained, but are also to a greater extent motivated by expressive
demands, as with the lyrical cor anglais presentation of B′ in bars
246–57. Adès also employs a technique that James Hepokoski
describes as an ‘introduction-coda frame’, both encasing the main
body of the sonata within this frame and permeating its thematic dis-
course with materials from the introduction.28 Significantly, the place-
ment of introductory material in the sonata proper functions
analogously to the woodblock strikes that demarcate the larger formal
divisions of the Chamber Symphony.29
. . .but all shall be well most overtly gestures towards the classical son-
ata through its use of strongly articulated cadential devices, outlining a
broad tonic–dominant polarity between exposition and development.
Clearly defined tonal centres thus serve rhetorically as points of depart-
ure and arrival. Nevertheless, the tonal logic of . . .but all shall be well, as
with its syntax, remains subject to the working-out of underlying the-
matic procedures, so that formal divisions result from ‘the musical pro-
cesses running their natural course and, effectively, starting over
again’.30 The cadential bass motion by fifths heard at the start of the
exposition, development and coda is at once a distant echo of functional
tonality and a consequence of the intervallic logic established in the
introduction to the work. As in the Chamber Symphony, the syntax
and tonal plot of . . .but all shall be well serve to give shape to, and render
expressive – to push and train – an underlying thematic process.
Familiarity with Adès’s first two sonata-form movements could
possibly reduce some of the novelty factor of his third, the Piano
Quintet (see Table 3).31 The Quintet inherits from . . .but all shall be
well the threefold rotational presentation of A and B material in the
exposition (generally involving progressively shorter durations) and
from the Chamber Symphony a large-scale tonal plot that is repeated,
with various reconfigurations along the way, in three broad spans that
correspond with the exposition, development and recapitulation. The
much vaunted compression of the recapitulation in the Piano Quintet,
less than half the length of the exposition, is not so different to that of
. . .but all shall be well (in which the recapitulation is 53% of the length
of the exposition in Adès’s recording). But context counts for much:
the introduction-coda frame of . . .but all shall be well and the repeat
of the exposition in the Piano Quintet both do much to exaggerate
the impact of the conclusion to the latter work. Nor are highly com-
pressed recapitulations limited to Adès’s sonata-form movements. The
first, second and fourth movements of Asyla, all in ternary form, fea-
ture recapitulations that are in their entirety shorter than the first the-
matic statement of their respective expositions. As with . . .but all shall
be well, the use of introductions and codas in Asyla goes some way to
counteracting the brevity of the recapitulations.32

28
James Hepokoski, Sibelius: Symphony no. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993),
p. 6.
29
This is comparable to the use of tuned percussion at formal boundaries in Asyla. See my
Thomas Adès: Asyla.
30
Tarnopolsky, programme note to . . .but all shall be well.
31
The durations in Table 3 are taken from the recordings by Adès with the Arditti Quartet
(Warner Classics, 5576642, 2005) and the Calder Quartet (Signum Classics, SIGCD413,
2015). There is also a recording by the DoelenKwartet Rotterdam with Dimitri
Vassilakis (Cybele, SACD 261603, 2018) that I did not consult for this article.
32
See Venn, Thomas Adès: Asyla, pp. 48, 79, 117.

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30 TEMPO
Table 3.
Formal overview, Piano Quintet, op. 20 (2000)

RN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12+1–6
Duration Arditti 29s 24s 35s 26s 41s 12s 28.5s 27.5s 57s 32s 8s 42.5s 13.5s
114s (9.6%) 109s (9.2%) 97s (8.2%) 56s (4.7%)
Calder 31s 24s 34s 24s 37s 12s 25s 25s 52s 34s 8s 44s 16s
113s (9.9%) 99s (8.6%) 94s (8.2%) 60s (5.3%)
Large-scale Exposition (Arditti: 31.7%; Calder 32%)
function
Inter-thematic A TR B C TR Closing section
function
Intra-thematic A (vln A′ (pno) A″ (vln 2, vla, vc; pno in X (prefiguring B X′ B′ B″ C X1<−3, X″ D D1
function 1) <2,3> in vln 1 dialogue)<2,3> in vln 1 B) −2> (C1?)
Tonal plot C→F B→E B♭ → E♭ → c c A c→ B→ B♭
B♭ B♭
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RN (repeat from RN 1) 12+7 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20+1–3 20+4 21+1–13 21+14 22+5 23

Duration Arditti 341s 24s 11s 17s 25s 52s 111s 71s 43s 7s 24s 9s 8s 20s 45.5s
(28.8%) 77s (6.5%) 163s (6%) 50s (4.2%) 41s (3.5%) 65.5s (5.5%)
(13.8%)
Calder 331s 25s 12s 17.5s 23s 51s 78s 75s 44s 6s 23s 10s 8s 24s 49s
(29%) 77.5s (6.8%) 129s (6.5%) 50s (4.4%) 41s (3.6%) 73s (6.4%)
(11.3%)
Large-scale Exposition repeat Development (Arditti: 26.3%; Calder: 24.6%) Recapitulation (Arditti: 13.2%; Calder: 14.4%)
function
Inter-thematic A′ TR B′ C′ ⇨RT A TR B TR Closing
function section
Intra-thematic A, <2,3> B, A Based on A X B B C A X B X1 X″ D/ D1/
function A A
Tonal plot B → B♭ B → f♯ B♭ → C c B♭ → C→ B♭ →C C C

ADÈS AND SONATA FORMS

31
 32 TEMPO

Approaching the Piano Quintet against the background of Adès’s

earlier sonata-form movements also draws attention to departures
from his prior practice. For all the ‘remarkably transparent division
into the three primary stages of the “text book” sonata form design’
of the Piano Quintet,33 the internal groupings within these stages
demonstrate greater formal complexity than any work Adès had com-
posed at that time. If this is in part a consequence of the length of the
Quintet – of Adès’s other instrumental movements and works, only
Tevot (2007) rivals it in length – it also points to a more intricate
engagement with sonata principles than has been acknowledged.
Indeed, Adès has noted with reference to the Piano Quintet that
any sonata – well, any structure – isn’t an empty form that you just pour mater-
ial into. It should have been developed with the material in an organic way. All
that I wanted to do in my Piano Quintet was a sonata form that gets from point
to point, that conveys the beginning to the end.34

Focusing on this trajectory, and the way in which the material com-
municates beginnings and endings (and middles), shifts attention
away from a priori notions of sonata form to the material’s discursive
functions.
In contrast to the somewhat referential use of tonality (as in the
Chamber Symphony) or a simulacrum of tonic–dominant polarity
(as in . . .but all shall be well), the unfolding of the tonal plot in the
Piano Quintet is more directly bound up with sonata discourse.
Prior scholarship on the Piano Quintet has drawn attention to the
irrationally functional harmonies that arise from the use of aligned
interval cycles for the A material, and the extent to which they (at
least at first) allude to diatonic tonal centres.35 But to my knowledge,
only Cao has connected this sense of moving in and out of tonal focus
within an overarching tonal plot: ‘If the work begins and ends in C
major, it affirms two secondary polarities, B and B flat: the instrumen-
talists move away from the tonal centre which they will have to
reclaim, just as they rhythmically desynchronize’.36
It is possible to be more precise. The A section of the exposition, as
in . . .but all shall be well, consists of three varied statements of the
material. An extension to the ending of the third masks the fact that
these statements are, characteristically, increasingly short. Most
importantly, however, each of these statements slips down through
a semitone: the first half of each statement alludes to a local ‘tonic’
(C, B, B♭), the second half to its ‘subdominant’ (F, E, E♭). The subse-
quent B section features prominently an augmented triad on B♭ (for
example, at the opening of the theme) and a diminished seventh on
G♯ (RN 5); as a point on the tonal journey, this might be understood
as a staging post as the music slides from the B♭ of RN 3 to the dia-
tonic A major that begins the C section (RN 8). But this moment
offers but an illusory stability: at the close of the exposition, the
music is dragged back to B♭ as a centre. Significantly, the repeat of
the exposition avoids returning to the C major of the very opening,

33
Gloag, ‘Narrative Agendas’, p. 101.
34
Adès and Service, Thomas Adès, p. 47.
35
See in particular, Stoecker, ‘Aligned Cycles’ and Wörner, ‘Tonality as “Irrationally
Functional Harmony”’.
36
‘Si l’oeuvre commence et termine en ut majeur, elle affirme deux polarités secondaires, si
et si bémol: les instrumentistes s’écartent du centre tonal qu’il leur faudra reconquérir, de
même qu’ils se désynchronisent rhythmiquement’. Cao, Thomas Adès le voyageur, p. 67 (my
translation).

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 ADÈS AND SONATA FORMS 33

and instead picks up the tonal narrative again at RN 1, holding the

‘tonic’ C major in abeyance.
The exposition, therefore, can be understood as a large-scale
motion from C to B♭, animated by key areas a semitone to either
side of the latter. (This essential tonal motion is repeated in both
development and recapitulation, once again prioritising the rotation
of tonal plots over thematic modules.) But there are wrinkles in this
journey that are bound up with Adès’s inherently dramatic
conception of sonata form. Most significantly, the clearly transitory
material first heard at RN 3 returns midway through the B section
(between the first and second strophes) and again following the A
major of the C section. In all cases, it is announced by a brutal unison
C–E♭ that remains stubbornly at this pitch regardless of the local tonal
context. As with the woodblock in the Chamber Symphony and
the glistening percussion of the introductory material of . . .but all
shall be well, the C–E♭ has a certain declamatory function. Cao
observes that Adès describes ‘the minor third that breaks the domin-
ance of the tonal scale as “a slit between two tectonic plates, which
allows them to slide against each other”’.37 The absence of this figure
in the recapitulation thus points towards the increasing tonal stability
found there.
Further wrinkles arise from thematic placement and relationships.
All commentators agree that the second subject (my section B) begins
at RN 4; only Cao notes that it is anticipated during the prior transi-
tion, claiming that Adès derived the idea from Beethoven’s Pastoral
Sonata, op. 28.38 More recently Adès has suggested that Beethoven’s
op. 28 provided the model for the third subject as ‘a version of the
second subject’ that mediates between the first and second subject;
he ‘liked that model because it seemed to be a piece where the articu-
lation of the drama was not very obvious, there wasn’t an obvious
opposition between first and second subjects, and the whole move-
ment feels like one organic process’.39 Christopher Fox’s suggestion
that the B material results from permutations of the intervals of the
A material has been widely accepted;40 the short–long iambs of the
B material recur in section C.
It is perhaps such techniques of thematic derivation that facilitates
the most significant alteration to the standard sonata-form model (and,
indeed, Beethovenian model). The C material does not recur in the
recapitulation (contributing to its reduced duration), but, rather, it
forms the conclusion of the development (RN 18). Fox characterises
this as part of the ‘wayward architecture’ of the movement.41
Thematically, the correspondences between the B and C sections
obviate the need for the latter to recur in the recapitulation. But
Adès’s sonata forms are not, at heart, motivated by symmetrical
repetitions of thematic material: their large-scale rotations are deter-
mined by tonal plot. Thus, the motion of the development from B
to B♭, without the additional detour to A major, repeats and distils
the tonal trajectory of the exposition repeat. The recapitulation

37
‘il décrit la tierce mineure qui vient briser la domination de la gamme par tons comme
“une fente entre deux plaques tectoniques, qui leur permet de glisser l’une contre l’autre”’.
Cao, Thomas Adès le voyageur, p. 67, my translation.
38
Ibid., p. 53.
39
Adès and Service, Thomas Adès, p. 50.
40
Fox, ‘Tempestuous Times’, pp. 48–51; see also Cao, Thomas Adès le voyageur, p. 57.
41
Fox, ‘Tempestuous Times’, p. 51. Wörner claims confusingly that RN 18 belongs to the
recapitulation of the movement (‘Tonality as “Irrationally Functional Harmony”’,
p. 306) while also claiming the recapitulation begins at RN 19 (pp. 301, 307).

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 34 TEMPO

reprises this tonal plot and, dramatically, there is no place in the

dynamic thrust to its C-major close to accommodate the idyll-like
nature of the C material.

Recapitulation: haunted libraries

Adès returned to sonata form in the first movement of his Concerto
for Piano and Orchestra, nearly two decades after completion of the
Piano Quintet. It is not unreasonable to speculate why he did so.
None of his previous works for soloist and orchestra – the Concerto
Conciso, op. 18 (1997), the Violin Concerto ‘Concentric Paths’,
op. 24 (2005) and In Seven Days (2008) – invoke the traditional prece-
dent of beginning with sonata form, and, indeed, the first two shift the
structural weight of the work to their second movements. Certainly,
the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra appears to play more overtly
with tradition than its predecessors, encouraging a miniature cottage
industry in which critics collectively attempted to trace every potential
allusion in the work. In response to claims that the opening of the
Concerto bore a strong resemblance to Gershwin’s ‘I Got
Rhythm’,42 Adès has replied:
It’s very much not from ‘I Got Rhythm’, I didn’t even think about it, but it’s a
perfectly fine. . . I actually collect those moments when somebody says ‘of
course you’re quoting from such-and-such’. And that wasn’t a quotation, and
I may even be quoting from something else – that’s often happened like this,
that something else buried. . . but it’s almost never the thing that someone
thinks it is. But then all of our minds are kind of haunted libraries and so
these things are there in some way.43
The resemblance to ‘I Got Rhythm’, intentional or otherwise, is just one of
a number of encounters between the Concerto and its predecessors in the
haunted libraries of musical memory. Kirill Gerstein suggests he hears
hints of Ravel, Prokofiev, Liszt, Rachmaninov and Beethoven.44 These
are names that occur regularly in the critical reception of the work,45
to which we can add (with various degrees of frequency and without
exhausting the list) Messiaen,46 Busoni,47 Bartók,48 Poulenc,49 Britten

42
Gerstein, Roots, Seeds & Live Cultures, beginning at 55:51. For a representative, but by no
means exhaustive, sample of critics making this connection, see Alex Ross, ‘The Concerto
Challenge’ and Nick Kimberley, ‘London Philharmonic Orchestra/Adès Review: Planetary
Big Bangs, Then a Trip to New Musical Worlds’, Evening Standard, 24 October 2019,
www.standard.co.uk/culture/london-philharmonic-orchestraades-review-planetary-big-
bangs-then-a-trip-to-new-musical-worlds-a4269766.html (accessed 23 February 2021).
Damian Thompson’s review of the Concerto departs from the primarily positive
consensus and he hears Ligeti, not Gershwin, in these bars. ‘In His New Piano
Concerto Thomas Ades’s Inspiration Has Completely Dried Up’, Spectator, 2 November
2019, www.spectator.co.uk/article/in-his-new-piano-concerto-thomas-ades-s-inspiration-
has-completely-dried-up (accessed 23 February 2021).
43
Adès, in Gerstein, Roots, Seeds & Live Cultures, beginning at 56:25.
44
Gerstein, cited in Tom Huizenga, ‘A New Piano Concerto for the People’, www.npr.org/
sections/deceptivecadence/2020/02/28/809724652/a-new-piano-concerto-for-the-people?t=
1607602172436 (accessed 23 February 2021).
45
Such a roll call indicates just how allusive Adès’s music is, even when it is acknowledged
that such references function to a greater extent as a critical shorthand for trying to capture
a particular musical experience.
46
Huizenga, ‘A New Piano Concerto for the People’.
47
Ross, ‘The Concerto Challenge’.
48
Michael Church, ‘Kirill Gerstein and Thomas Adès, Royal Festival Hall Review’,
Independent, 26 October 2019, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/
reviews/london-philharmonic-orchestra-thomas-ades-kirill-gerstein-royal-festival-hall-review-
a9169186.html (accessed 23 February 2021).
49
Leslie Wright, review of Adès Conducts Adès, www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/
2020/Apr/Ades_PC_4837998.htm (accessed 23 February 2021).

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 ADÈS AND SONATA FORMS 35

and Ligeti,50 Stravinsky and Bernstein51 and even Vaughan Williams.52 If

many of these echoes occur fleetingly on the musical surface, the
Concerto’s form is haunted by a more specific ghost. Writing in
Gramophone, and encapsulating something of a critical consensus,
Andrew Mellor asks, with what is surely a nod to the work’s overt use
of sonata form, ‘is this the last Romantic piano concerto? [Adès is] lifting
a footprint from centuries ago’.53
Accordingly, Adès’s deployment of sonata form replicates the larger
groupings of exposition, development and recapitulation, each corre-
sponding more or less to a threefold rotation of a single tonal plot
beginning in F, the second of which (as in . . .but all shall be well) is trun-
cated, and the third considerably expanded. In both the first and third
rotation, the tonal destination is D♭, replicating the tertial harmonic
poles of the Chamber Symphony (B and enharmonic D♯) and . . .but
all shall be well (B and G). The more complex tonal plot of the third
rotation/recapitulation makes necessary (from the perspective of clos-
ing the tonal argument) a coda that ends with the tonic F (the Chamber
Symphony is the obvious precedent here).
At a lower hierarchic level the intra-thematic functions of the
Concerto also allude to traditional modes of organisation such as the clas-
sical antecedent–consequent period (see Table 4).54 In this narrow sense
the Concerto is far more deserving of a neo-classical label than, say, the
Piano Quintet. The apparent reversion to classical phrasing masks, how-
ever, a characteristic deployment of an unfolding thematic process that,
as in Adès’s earlier sonata-form movements, is the primary form-building
element. The formal properties of the opening A section can be taken as
indicative. Example 1a presents a reduction of the opening five bars;
notable here is the oscillation between bars based on crotchet durations
and those based on triplet crotchets, as well as busy accompaniment
in which the triadic harmonisations rapidly cascade through modal
inflections (for example, bar 3, beats 2 and 3, pass through chords of F
minor, F major, C major and C minor). Example 1b extends the melodic
line of 1a to encompass the entirety of the first phrase (at which point, in
bar 11, the orchestra leads for start of the second strain); the underlying
harmony has been sketched in. The first half of the phrase begins in a
relatively uncomplicated F major before spiralling to sharper-key
areas; the second half of the phrase works back to B♭ major. (This loosely
recalls, but considerably embellishes, the similar harmonic pattern in the
opening of the Piano Quintet.)
But for all that both syntactical grouping and tonal plot evoke trad-
itional precedent, the material is generated by a thematic process inde-
pendent of both. Example 1c abstracts the material, demonstrating
how, rhythmically, the passage is based on four statements of a rhyth-
mic idea designated X, itself generated from a pair of dactyls, x (a crot-
chet followed by two triplet crotchets) and x1 (a crotchet followed by

50
Andrew Clements, ‘LPO/Adès Review – Effortful UK Premiere of Ferocious Piano
Concerto’, Guardian, 24 October 2019, www.theguardian.com/music/2019/oct/24/
london-philharmonic-thomas-ade-royal-festival-hall (accessed 23 February 2021).
51
Richard Fairman, ‘Thomas Adès’s New Concerto Bursts with Colour and Spirit at the
Royal Festival Hall’, Financial Times, 24 October 2019, www.ft.com/content/
0d4dde9e-f64b-11e9-9ef3-eca8fc8f2d65 (accessed 23 February 2021).
52
Robert Hugill, review of Adès conducts Adès, www.planethugill.com/2020/05/
uncompromising-large-scale-drama.html (accessed 23 February 2021).
53
Andrew Mellor, review of Adès conducts Adès, Gramophone, May (2020), p. 36, www.gramo-
phone.co.uk/review/ad-s-conducts-ad-s (accessed 23 February 2021).
54
Timings for Table 4 are taken from the recording by Thomas Adès with Kirill Gerstein
(piano) and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon, CD 4837998,
2020).

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36 TEMPO
Table 4.
Formal overview, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra/i (2018)

Bars* 1– 10– 20–24 25–32 33– 44–51 52–64 65–68 69– 75–81 82–85 86– 90– 96– 100– 104–
10 19 43 74 89 95 99 103 110
Duration 10s 8s 8s 9s 13s 16s 42s 8s 12.5s 14.5s 9 7.5 13.5 8 8 12
35s (7.85%) 29s (6.5%) 42s 35s (7.85%) 30s (6.7%) 28s (6.3%)
(9.4%)
Large-scale Exposition (44.6%)
function
Inter-thematic A B ⇨ TR (?) B
function
Intra-thematic Antecedent (sentential) Consequent Cadenza mod rep rep (with Antecedent Consequent
functions (truncated) pno)
A1 A1′ continuation A2 A1 A2′ A2″ Z Z′ Z″ B1 B1′ B2 B1 B1′ B2
Tonal plot F →V/ F →V/ F→ (quintal) d→ D♭
→ F (d) F (quintal) →
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Bars 111–24 125–28 129–36 137–412 1413–43 144–48 149–57 158–61 162–65 166–69 170–73 174–79
Duration 15s 5s 9s 6s 7s 7s 11s 13s 17s 13s 11s 21s
42s (9.4%) 18s (4%) 30s (6.7%) 45s (10.1%)
Large-scale function Development (9.4%) Recapitulation (31.8%)
Inter-thematic function Based on A RT A TR B
Intra-thematic function Antecedent Consequent Cadenza Antecedent Antecedent
A1 A2 A1 A2 based on A1 A1 A1’ A2 A2’ B1 B1’ B2
Tonal Plot f/F C F F♯ D♭

Bars 180–183 184–189 190–193 194–202 203–207 208–215 216–220 221–224 225–228 229–237
Duration 16s 22s 11s 11s 7s 11s 9s 8s 8s 10s
49s (11%) 37s (8.3%) 26s (5.8%)
Large-scale function Recapitulation (continued) Coda (14.1%)
Inter-thematic function B A TR A
Intra-thematic function Consequent Antecedent Consequent TR Cadential

ADÈS AND SONATA FORMS

B1 B1 B2 (pno)B1 (orch) A1 A2 A1 A2 Z Z′ A1/2
Tonal plot F♯ G? B♭ D D♭ B → V/F F

* Bar numbers follow the orchestral score.

37
 38 TEMPO

Example 1:
Thomas Adès, Concerto for Piano
and Orchestra, first movement (a)
bars 1–5 (reduction); (b) bars 1–11
(melody only); (c) abstraction of
material of 1b. © Faber Music Ltd
2018. Reproduced by permission of
the publishers.

two quavers). This operates as a talea to which an extended colore is

added. Annotations to Example 1c demonstrate recurrent intervallic
patterns within the colore; it concludes on the downbeat of bar 10
and its second rotation begins out of sync with the talea.
The result is that the second phrase (bars 10–20) functions as a var-
ied repetition, albeit one in which the variation arises through strict
adherence to a compositional process rather than, say, a particular har-
monic plan (see Example 2). Nevertheless, by bar 20, the working-out
of the process ends in a metrically weighted F, ending the second
phrase where the first began. From here, the piano and orchestra
begin to operate independently; Example 3 follows the piano line.
At first, the piano would appear to be reprising the opening of the
concerto, but Adès fragments and reworks the material to spiral off

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 ADÈS AND SONATA FORMS 39

Example 2:
Thomas Adès, Concerto for Piano
and Orchestra, first
movement, melodic line (bars 11–
20). © Faber Music Ltd 2018.
Reproduced by permission of the
publishers.

Example 3:
Thomas Adès, Concerto for Piano
and Orchestra, first
movement, melodic line (bars 20–
33). © Faber Music Ltd 2018.
Reproduced by permission of the
publishers.

into flatter harmonic regions (bars 20–24). The combination of

motivic recombination and the metrical complexity that arises
through the independence of soloist and accompaniment suggests
that it functions in the manner of a classical continuation. It is fol-
lowed (bars 25–32) by a figure based on descending scales that, con-
textually, has a cadential function (labelled A2 in Table 4). All told,
bars 1–33 recall the functions, and at times the modes of working,
of the classical sentence, but the tonal plan and primary means of the-
matic variation operate independently of classical syntactical
groupings.
Bars 33–51 offer up a shortened reworking of the opening: a trun-
cated consequent to the opening 32 bars’ antecedent. This is one of a
number of Adèsian compressed repetitions within the movement.
Indeed, the development, based entirely on theme A, is especially
fleeting. On paper, the same might be said of the recapitulation
(which reduces the 110 bars of the exposition down to just 21), but
here (as in . . .but all shall be well) Adès broadens the tempo signifi-
cantly of section B (bars 166–93) to allow for a passage of great poetic
beauty to counterbalance the madcap metrical complexity of the A
sections. Proportionally the recapitulation is the largest to be found
in Adès’s four sonata-form movements.
Many of the thematic omissions in the development and recapitu-
lation can be attributed to the greater emphasis the composer places
on tonal plot as a determinant of form. At the same time, and as in

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 40 TEMPO

the Piano Quintet, such omissions are also a consequence of the

strong thematic connections between ideas in the exposition. Thus,
the melody of the transition (Z) is derived from section A2 and
given a new fifth-based accompaniment. This accompaniment in
turn continues into section B, the melodic contour of which recalls
section A1. Dispensing with the need to recall all of this material dir-
ectly in the development, recapitulation and coda allows Adès to place
sonata functions once again in the service of musical dramaturgy, in
particular the dramatisation of the interactions between soloist and
orchestra.
If the discussion above goes some way to explaining how syntactical
grouping, thematic process and tonal plot combine to create a typic-
ally Adèsian contribution to sonata form, it does not explain why he
chose to emulate the past in this manner. There are doubtless mul-
tiple reasons, but I would like to conclude with the notion of the
haunted library. The capacity for Adès’s music to suggest multiple
connections to other composers goes beyond particular thematic
ideas and expressive allusions and, as Mellor implies, extends to
form as well. Through the evocation of particular gestures, genres
and forms, Adès is inviting the listener to ransack the contents of
their own haunted library, to make their own intertextual links.
The more explicit Adès’s syntactical emulation of the broad strokes
of, say, sonata form, the easier it is for listeners to bring to bear
their own expectations and assumptions, and to have them challenged
(or confirmed) as part of a pleasurable exchange of ideas.55 The sheer
variety of composers cited in reviews of Adès’s Concerto for Piano
and Orchestra (or his Piano Quintet, for that matter) is ample evi-
dence of this. But it is a high-stakes strategy: the greater the intertext-
ual pleasure, the greater the risk of luxuriating on the musical surface
rather than engaging with its content. The danger, to return to Ross’s
description of the Concerto, is that the ‘paean to tradition’ of Adès’s
music is emphasised without adequately counterbalancing it with a
demonstration of how it is simultaneously ‘a sophisticated burlesque
of it’. Although Adès is now in his fifty-first year, with his works hav-
ing enjoyed over three decades of performances and recordings, there
remain many riches yet to be found in the haunted libraries of his
music.

55
The notion of pleasure here refers to Whittall, ‘James Dillon, Thomas Adès, and the
Pleasures of Allusion’.

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